


Pursuit

by Kirsten



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 22:53:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5266913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirsten/pseuds/Kirsten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's an odd thing, to be pursued. Bond is not accustomed to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pursuit

Q decides one weekend that he would like to go back to Skyfall, and so of course Bond goes with him.

The place is a wreck of broken stone and blackened beams, but it isn't as bleak as Bond expected. The moor is blooming with purple heather, the sun is shining, and the air smells sweet and fresh. There's been a season of snow and rain in Scotland since Bond was here last and the stench of fuel and flame has gone.

"Why are we here, Q?" Q Branch went over the scene with a fine toothcomb in the days after Silva's death and there's nothing Bond wants to salvage. 

Q is in the middle of the rubble, stooping to look closer at what seems to be the face of a grandfather clock, but he straightens and looks Bond in the eye. "I wanted to see what made you."

There's no follow up. Bond watches Q and Q watches him back, silence speaking between them, although the words of it are faded beyond Bond's hearing. Then Q carries on, picks his way through the remains of Bond's life.

Bond lets him do it.

-

It's an odd thing, to be pursued. Bond is not accustomed to it. It leaves a rolling knot of tension in his gut and chest. It started after M, if he had to put an approximate time frame on it, although he couldn't date it with any degree of accuracy. He remembers arriving back at headquarters and being handed a glass of Scotch. His clothes were crisped with M's blood and he stank of smoke and pond water. He remembers being pointed at the showers and emerging from a cloud of steam to find a change of clothes on a chair.

He remembers stopping by Q Branch before shipping out on his first Mallory mission a couple of weeks later, remembers being asked _sotto voce_ : "You are ready for this, 007?"

He remembers answering: "Of course, Q."

He'd said it with such certainty. He remembers the mission, too, because he had been ready for it and then some, every decision on point, every kill clean and easy. It was the same after Vesper, Bond knows. Grief takes many forms, and for Bond its form is a knife.

When he arrived back in London, Bond returned his equipment. Q's eyes had known too much, but his lips had been sealed. He asked no questions and made no demands, and Bond had nodded and that had been that. It had been exactly what Bond needed, and he'd walked out of Q Branch with an echo of Q's smile on his own face.

Bond is not an idiot. He's spent his career in pursuit of others, being faster, smarter, and harder. He knows what predation looks like.

-

Q asks out of the blue: "Was it bad?"

"Was what bad?" 

"Was it bad when your parents died?" Q clarifies.

Bond's eye has been caught by two buzzards flying over the moor, an adult and a juvenile. He turns to look at Q, who is standing in front of Bond's parents, their bones and their headstone.

They've already been inside the chapel. Q spent long moments looking at the spot where M died while Bond sat in one of the pews and stared up at the ceiling.

Bond isn't sure what to tell Q about that time. He'd spent two days in the dark, alone. For the boy he'd been, it was a necessary isolation. Eventually he'd said goodbye to Kincade and gone to Austria with Hannes Oberhauser, who taught him how to hunt and track, how to stand up and carry on. Then Hannes had died, too – and Bond thinks, now, that was the loss that shattered him and turned his grief into a blade.

In the end, though, that's just a story. Bond takes Q's hand, kisses him and says, "Let's get back."

"James –" 

Bond kisses him again to stop his protests before they start. "I really did like the look of that bed," Bond says of their hotel room, and pinches Q's arse for emphasis.

"You are annoying," Q tells him, but he doesn't argue when Bond starts them back across the moor. 

-

They're staying at a hotel a few miles further north. It's an eighteenth century manor house, old grey stone and sculpted gardens filled with rhododendrons. It has a spa and a gym and a bar stocked with excellent Scotch. Their room has a television and a coffee machine, and a king-size bed with a comfortable mattress and thick, soft pillows and warm quilts.

What it does not have is wifi, but Q doesn't seem to care. He's lying on top of Bond and he's got his hands on Bond's face, kissing him relentlessly, barely taking time to breathe. Q's hands are gentle and his thumbs stroke Bond's cheekbones while his hips grind down against Bond's.

It's nice. Bond is stretched out on the bed, still in his jeans and his sweater and his boots, his head resting on those ridiculous soft pillows while Q kisses him until his lips bruise. He's got his hands on Q's arse, and Q smiles against his mouth every time Bond squeezes denim and flesh together.

Q's hands slide down to his jaw and Bond lets Q tilt his head back and press kisses to his neck. Bond's eyes are open. Over Q's shoulder he can see the evening sun starting to creep in through the old sash window and he can just make out mountains in the distance, blurred in the glass that's run with age. He looks for the flash of a sniper scope and of course he doesn't find it. There's nothing but pale sunlight and Scotland and Q.

It's unfamiliar. Bond wonders when home became a foreign country.

Q stops kissing him but keeps stroking Bond's face and his hair. "James," Q says, and smiles as he does so.

Bond stares up at him. It's easy to return Q's smile, but that tension is back in his chest. To give of his body is easy. There are no borders left to him, no physical limits that have not been breached, but this is something else.

-

"We should go for a walk," Q says later.

It's 11pm and the sky is not yet entirely dark. Bond is lying next to Q, naked and aching and sex-bruised, half dozing and half staring out of the window. 

"But this is so comfy," Bond says through a yawn.

"But this is a very dark sky," Q argues. "And it’s a clear night. The stars will be spectacular."

Bond lets his eyes slip close and pats Q's warm thigh. "You go. I'll guard the bed."

He hears the indistinct huff that means Q is muffling a laugh with his hand. The bed shifts as Q settles closer to him, so close that Q's breath is warm and damp next to his ear. Q's body presses to his side and Q's arms wrap around his head and his chest.

"Are you cuddling me, Q?"

"Yes," says Q. "Now do be quiet and go to sleep."

"Hmm," says Bond, trying to think of a protest – but then he falls asleep, and another day is done.

-

In the past, when he had no mission to complete, Bond occasionally woke in the morning and thought of the day to come as something to be endured. He had a soldier's focus and put one foot in front of the other, made the decisions that needed to be made and got through to the end of the day without pausing too much for thought.

Q told him, once, before they started on this thing of theirs, that he quite often looked spectacularly unenthusiastic about life. "To be honest," Q said, "it's probably one of the most normal things about you."

-

This morning, Bond wakes up to the steady, relaxing noise of splashes and water hitting glass. Q is in the shower, which is always something to behold, but frankly Bond's seen it before and he's grown very fond of the bed. He pulls the quilt further up around his shoulders and drifts off again, until Q chucks a wet towel at his head.

"Come on, you," Q says. "It's kippers and eggs for breakfast. The internet said it's excellent."

"It sounds a bit wrong to me," Bond says, but he sits up anyway and watches Q get dressed. Q's body is smooth and un-bruised; Bond's never been one to leave lasting signs of his presence.

Q, on the other hand, is not shy of leaving his mark. "Look at you," Q says, giving Bond's love-bitten chest a blatant, leering once-over. His regard is guileless; Bond doesn't know whether to laugh or preen.

"Less of that," Bond warns him, "if you want to make it downstairs in time for breakfast."

They do make it in time for breakfast, although it's a near thing. Q sips at his Earl Grey looking thoroughly tumbled, while Bond methodically knocks back an entire pot of coffee. Here, in this safe, comfortable hotel with Q by his side, his body is moving – but somehow he just can't wake up.

As the internet predicted, the kippers and eggs are delicious.

-

For a long time, Bond convinced himself it was all about sex, despite all signs to the contrary. The meals Q cooked were mere prelude, his conversation a seduction. The first times were like that – food and conversation quickly abandoned in favour of the bedroom and frantic, grasping hands and grinding hips were the extent of it. Bond rose and dressed and left in the middle of the night, and for weeks it seemed something furtive and easily dismissed, until –

"I want to fuck you," Q said one night in November while Bond was licking kisses into the curve of his neck.

It had stopped Bond in his tracks. He lifted his head and looked down at Q, who smiled up at him with something akin to triumph.

"I know it's not something you're accustomed to," Q said. His fingers traced patterns over Bond's arse, over and over until they landed between his cheeks and dug in to touch Bond's hole. The sensation had shocked Bond into a shudder that rocked his whole body and he'd kissed Q rather desperately, his face warm with embarrassment at his failure to spot the trap before it sprung.

He allowed Q to turn them until he lay on his back, staring up at Q's face and pinned flat by Q's gentle hands on his throat. "My brave James," Q had whispered, and proceeded to fuck the life out of him, or into him – Bond still had not decided which.

Even after that, Bond could have walked away, but the hours of careful, tender kissing that followed were harder to dismiss.

"There's nothing here for you," Bond had said in the small hours of the morning, when Q finally turned off the light.

Q stroked the fading bullet scar at his shoulder. "I'll be the judge of that."

-

Q will be driving them back to London. It rankles a bit, but it's Q's car and so Bond doesn't fight it too much. He's a passenger on this trip, Q's impromptu journey of James-discovery, and so he'll go wherever Q goes.

Q is fastening his overnight bag. "Have you got everything?"

"I've had everything for the last ten minutes," Bond grumbles. He's lying on the bed again, propped up against the pillows. He doesn't want to move.

Q stops fussing with his bag. Bond meets Q's eyes and watches as the expression on Q's face softens in response to whatever expression is on his. Q moves closer to the bed and then climbs onto it, over Bond, shielding Bond with his torso and his arms and his legs. Bond doesn't need it, but it's nice that Q tries.

"I don't want to leave either," says Q, and kisses him briefly, once, twice, three times before pulling back.

Bond stares up at him. "Let's stay."

Q shakes his head. "Let's not," he says, and kisses Bond again. Bond allows it, for the distraction it provides and because kissing Q is always a delight. Q's kisses are different almost every time, sometimes hot and wet, sometimes hungered, sometimes chaste.

This particular kiss is restrained and passionate. Bond bites at Q's lower lip as he pulls away.

"It's been an enlightening weekend," Q says. "I think I've finally caught you," he adds with a smile.

"You caught me a long time ago," Bond tells him. It's a confession. He wraps his arms around Q's shoulders and pulls him down into a hug. "A rat caught in a trap," he murmurs into Q's ear, that rolling knot of tension back in his gut and his chest.

"A prize that I've won," Q corrects.


End file.
